All good writing begins with terrible first efforts.
(Anne Lamott)

According to today's New York Times, a democratic legislator from Minneapolis is co-sponsoring a bill in the state House of Representatives to allow bars in St. Paul to stay open until 4 a.m. during the Republican National Convention in September. Rep. Phyllis Kahn says the measure would make St. Paul seem more "sophisticated."

Mississippi River from the monument at Summit Avenue, Saint Paul, 12.20.07

Home for holiday R&R, and couldn't be happier about that. Trying to cram in as much St. Paul stuff as possible while I'm here. This morning that included a trip with my beloved to Mickey's Diner followed by a visit to Common Good, the best independent bookstore around these parts since Hungry Mind passed into the great beyond (RIP). Common Good is owned by some guy named G. Keillor -- no idea who he is, but his books are tall, good looking, and above average. And he's got even better signage, as you can see below.

I have held off writing about the 35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis because, quite frankly, I wasn't quite sure what to say here. After shock came worry; I called my parents who assured me that all of finnfam was accounted for, including those who work at the U. Then came that sick feeling, the way the pit of your stomach remembers grief, feeling horrible for those who are experiencing impossible loss.

I haven't lived in the Twin Cities for nearly fifteen years, but the place I jokingly call the Mother Ship will always be home. Here are a few comments from local columnists that I think are worthsharing.

As we were heading north for our annual cabin-on-a-lake trip, we ran across media coverage of a recent study that ranks the U.S. last among the 21 richest nations in the amount of guaranteed vacation time. And it's not just that Americans often don't get -- or don't take -- time off, they apparently don't take enough days at once. A spokesperson from the group Take Back Your Time observed that "studies show" people need about two full weeks to actually relax and get the benefits from time off. And this time must be taken at once, not cobbled together with a few days here or there.

Our two weeks in the woods offer strong anecdotal evidence for the importance of a longer stretch of time. Based in our cozy cabin-on-a-lake and close to lots of fabulousplaces to take day trips, my beloved and I unconsciously fell into a kind of day on/day off schedule: one day of "doing stuff" (hiking, sightseeing) followed by one day of "doing nothing" (hang-around-the-cabin fare such as walks, sitting on the dock, "taking a float" in the lake on an inflatable raft, reading, napping, etc.). It turned out to be the perfect recipe for actually relaxing. By about Thursday of the first week (we arrived Saturday) I finally felt relaxed. How much would it have sucked if we'd had to go home just two days later?

Because I am water-deprived here on the prairie, I instinctively made sure that every one of the long hikes we took was dominated by running water. After a lot of May and June rain, the rivers were running fast this year. Unfortunately, most river hikes also happen to be dominated by stairs. Lots and lots of stairs. Long climbs down and up stairs, courtesy of the designers of the Superior Hiking Trail, who apparently never met a steep set of stairs they didn't like. Fishing on East Bearskin, our home base, was terrible. But a small finnfam contingent did have great fun on a half-day charter on Lake Superior, where we were guided by the aptly-named Fishin' Chicks, twentysomething sisters whose motto is "Life's too short to fish with ugly men." See the slideshow below for a thrilling action sequence of my adventures with a lake trout.

The final highlight of the trip was a culinary one, believe it or not. This year, for the first time, finnfam managed to organize and pull off a progressive dinner -- for twelve! We started with appetizers and sparkling wine in our tiny cabin (see here for the three recipes I served). We then moved on to other finnfam digs in the lodge, where we enjoyed GeekBro's awesome citrus salad and Auntie Jan (aka the Dean's Queen) stuffed us to the gills with surf 'n turf: short ribs and crab cakes with a side of mashed potatoes and an amazing spicy vegetable slaw. We finished the night up the road at the gorgeous hilltop house of our beloved friends, Dave and Barb, who wowed everyone with a decadent ice cream cake.

And now for the slideshow, which I have just figured out how to add to my blog (thanks, Lu!)...

We are getting ready to head north soon, for the annual finnfam cabin-on-a-lake vacation extravaganza. Packing for this kind of trip is pretty complicated. We have our own kitchen, which requires menu planning. We do a decent amount of hiking and whatnot, which means loading up the hiking boots and day packs. You also have to be prepared for 80 degree days and 40 degree nights, which means bringing about three seasons' worth of clothing. And if you are me and my beloved, you have to spend a lot of time picking just the right books to bring along. This is a very, very important decision, because the wrong vacation reading can really wreck a trip.

Summer reading has always been a big deal to me. When I was a kid, every summer I participated in the St. Paul Public Library's summer reading program. It was a contest of sorts, although I have absolutely no memory of what the prizes were. The thrill was in the fight, you might say. You would get a form and the goal was to read as many books as you could over the summer. When you finished a book you wrote down the title and author and then you had to get each item on the list stamped by a Real Librarian who would certify that the books you read Counted. Because, as I recall, there were some books that Didn't Count. You were required to read at your age level, which meant that a 10-year-old couldn't just grab a bunch of little-kid "golden books" with huge print and read a hundred of them in five minutes. That Would Not Count.

My best friend Margie and I always participated, and every week or so we went to the big downtown library to get our lists checked and load up on new books. We were pretty competitive with each other about the lists. I remember becoming quite indignant when Margie loaded her list with Encyclopedia Brown books, because they had really short chapters (each one a little mystery story) and you could knock off like four of them in a day. (For those of you "of a certain age" who remember Encyclopedia Brown, check out this fabulous parody, Wikipedia Brown). It seemed like cheating, but apparently I had higher standards because the librarians thought that Encyclopedia Brown Did Count. So then, of course, I loaded my list with those books too.

For the record, here's my summer reading list for the cabin-on-a-lake:

John M. Barry, The Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America

Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff, The Race Beat: The Press, The Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation

Marisha Pessl, Special Topics in Calamity Physics (a novel)

Robert Sullivan, Cross Country: 15 Years and 90,000 Miles on the Roads and Interstates of America

Jed Rubenfeld, The Interpretation of Murder (a novel)

New novels in mystery series by Julia Spencer-Fleming, Sarah Stewart-Taylor, and William Kent Krueger (apparently all mystery writers have three names now).

There's no way that I'll get through them all in two weeks (a girl has to fish, after all), but it's important to have choices. And it is important that these books contain absolutely no hint of anything related to work.

Our annual trip to the edge of the BWCA is just about 3 weeks away, and already I'm getting excited. While we won't be doing any heavy-duty wilderness camping or hauling of canoes, it's always important to reassess one's skills before heading into the woods. How do you know if you really have what it takes to survive in the BWCA wilderness? The Boundary Waters Blog offers this, um, "useful" Wilderness Test. Try it and see how you rate.

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